# Recap #15: The Somnolescent Incident
## October 31, 2020
### From gopher.somnolescent.net, the Gopherhole of the weird lightbulb people
As of writing this (at 11PM at night), another Halloween around here has come
and gone. Indeed, we're getting into that part of the year where the
Somnolians want nothing more than to vibe. We're well into holiday season,
man! After this one, we've only got one more (likely beefy, just on my end,
let alone everyone else's...) recap before the big yearly one and a bit of a
rest from us as a group. Gonna be lovely.

Still! Things happened *this month*, and that? Is what a recap is made of.

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## Candy Corn's Halloween Gift Shop
Of course, Halloween means Caby's annual limited edition Halloween subsite!
This time, Candy Corn, that mysterious pumpkin-headed gentleman, has set up
shop in a broom closet with seven boxes of goodies for you to discover. What
could possibly be inside?

If you've missed it thusfar, you better go quickly--remember, Candy Corn
doesn't take kindly to stragglers.

## Arthur's delusions
> With the rifle's barrel pointed half-heartedly through the posts on the
> banister, Arthur scanned the scene further. Everything had settled by then.
> Embers from the evening's fire still glowed softly and silently in the
> fireplace. The stuffed ram head that watched over the room with wide,
> glassy eyes was only barely visible in the shadow of the mantle. His
> shelves of records were untouched. In the kitchen, things were stranger
> still; not a pane of glass cracked, smashed, shattered, or even missing.
> Nothing, not even a chair, was out of place out on the patio either.

I didn't get the big Pennyverse Halloween story I wanted to out the door this
year (least the fallout was less disastrous than 2019's), but I still managed
to write something involving everyone's favorite perky prairie boy mailman,
Arthur. I call it “Delusional”.

Sorta inspired by those freaky faces you see in dark rooms and sorta inspired
by Penny's infinite desire to torment this poor soul, if you ever wanted to
see how a man who keeps a 19th century sporting rifle over his bed reacts
when he feels threatened by things going bump outside, I'd say it's worth a
read.

## Caby's art...blog?
Caby's always maintained some kind of local art gallery on her sites, but the
monthly static HTML one introduced mid-last year never quite worked as
intended. Originally, it was 2000-era <table> layout junk making new pages a
chore, and even after I cleaned it up and made it into an AutoSite template,
the gremlins never went away. Cue it falling months behind.

So instead, Caby's opted to do what everyone on our network does these days--
use WordPress instead! And so, with an old, tweaked DeviantART green blog
theme in tow, Caby's art blog makes its debut to the world. She still hasn't
linked it on her site yet, but here's the relevant RSS feed so you don't
miss a thing. ...You do use an RSS reader, right?

## Center for Data Redundancy
Caby thing, me thing, Caby thing...me thing! This was a real spur-of-the-
moment type deal, and one I only just finished up recently. Savannah
(fivewholeducks--and yes, she's still around, even though she never comes to
play with us online...) recently had a hard drive eat itself and lost a bunch
of work in the process. borb also had something of a similar scare when a
SATA cable fried itself inside her computer. (Thankfully, the drive
survived.)

Given that I'm utterly paranoid about data loss these days, and given that
borb was lost on where to start keeping her stuff safe, I figured I'd write
up an in-depth couple of pages on my site for creating a backup solution if
you're not some kind of tech wizard. It's called the Center for Data
Redundancy, and it takes you through taking stock of your data, why keeping
as many copies of your stuff as possible is important, different backup
media, costs, and pros and cons, and just how to keep on top of things.

It's admittedly fairly dry stuff, but it's important stuff! No one likes
having their stuff lost, yeah?

## No One Needs PNG Optimization
Normally, I'd throw this under a “blog highlights” section, but I was the
only one who wrote anything on here this month! And given that it's likely
one of the longest posts I've ever written, I'd say it deserves its own
section. Bring forth “The Clever Feat of PNG Optimization”.

In short, I got really into researching how PNG (that magical lossless image
format that we all use quite often around here) works, and how an optimizer
program like PNGGauntlet can do what it does. It was quite the rabbit hole,
and I certainly learned a lot. Whether or not you will depends how much
reading about length-distance pairs and looking at charts of file sizes
interests you.

Home stretch now, lads. I know I've got a bunch of things I'd like to get
done before the winter chills us all (and I hear some of the other lads do
too...), so stay tuned for that final monthly recap of 2020!